Grit Lab Report

Hi Daniel,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and stimulation.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was extraversion.

You said your top three talents were social, verbal, and artistic / spatial.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to working out .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Make a LinkedIn post .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Feel satisfied and accomplished .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Procrastination / lack of priority .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I get home, I will write a LinkedIn post .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Writing .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Satisfied when receiving critical feedback, and Satisfied when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being job confusion .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Academics .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .

In one word, you said it made you feel Cathartic .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

I think it would be that grit is malleable and that our talent is also malleable.
"Interest is an emotion"
"Talent is the speed at which you learn"
"Habit fusion is combining your lower level goals with your higher level goal"
"Be nice to beginners"
"Stress can sometimes be good"
"Habits are the secret to self-control"
"Relationships are the most important"
"Givers are more likely to succeed"

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Annalisa Fang
I appreciate Daniel for his sense of humor, supportive nature, and natural curiosity about others and the world. He never failed to make our group members laugh whenever someone was having a tough week, and he was always willing to be transparent and share about his personal experiences as well. In addition, Daniel also has a sense of curiosity that benefits his and others’ learning. He would regularly ask follow up questions to make people think just a little bit deeper into the subject matter. I’m very grateful that I got to have Daniel in my small group this past semester. Daniel’s presentation was funny, engaging, and showed how he was able to push himself out of his comfort zone with his discovery project. From his presentation, I learned more about the social media industry, and it also showed me the importance of pivoting when something is not working anymore. It made me reflect on how I can challenge myself more in my personal pursuits, and I enjoyed Daniel’s insight and learning about his experience. He is good at public speaking and keeping his audience engaged, whether they have a prior intrinsic interest in the subject matter or not.
Carma Rishani
Daniel, I think you have managed to make me laugh in almost every interaction we’ve had this semester. You truly are one of a kind, so authentic and so unafraid to be yourself - it truly is such a gift to the people around you! I have so appreciated getting to know you better, and understanding your mentality on life. You’re an incredibly engaging person, and will always say what’s on your mind, yet I've observed the thoughtful and inquisitive way you approach things before doing so. I really appreciate how I’ve seen your confidence shine through, even going so far as to ask and have Professor Duckworth agree to do the griddy with you - you are going places Daniel! Your Discovery Project perfectly encapsulated your unique essence! Content creation is not an easy task, but what set your project apart was the two-fold aspect. Your use of LinkedIn as a social media platform, where you shared your thoughts, how your day was going, pictures of your friends and your In-N-Out Burger was just quintessentially you! I admire how your passion and creativity radiated through every post.The short videos you shared on TikTok and Instagram Reels were about putting yourself out there. You exuded confidence and light when doing these videos, and I love how you got other people, strangers and friends alike, involved in your. I think you perfectly encapsulated your Discovery Project BFF’s advice of “Don’t think, just do”, and I'm excited to see where that leads you in life!
Jessica Lin
Daniel is someone who is always unapologetically himself and this shines through in his authenticity. Daniel always spoke his mind, and with his positive attitude, always made the mood of our group lighter. I really respect Daniel's ability to speak whatever's on his mind and his ability to do so pushed our group to probe at difficult questions. Daniel's presence in our group discussions challenged me to think deeper about many discussion topics. The lightness with which he approaches life has inspired me to take things less seriously and to be more authentic to who I am. Daniel's discovery project was unlike any of the other ones: he was able to combine both a potential future career and a hobby. Content creation is not a common hobby or career path at Penn, and so staying true to himself, it was refreshing to learn about the content creation path as part of Daniel;s discovery project presentation. It was one thing to hear about Daniel's content creation, but when Daniel's TikToks actually came up on my For You Page, it was really cool to see Daniel's hard work come to fruition. I think Daniel's greatest strength is his authenticity and this is something that shines through in the content he creates.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.